


A Great Big Party Every Night

by Barkour



Category: Princess and the Frog (2009)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Future Fic, Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-27
Updated: 2014-04-27
Packaged: 2018-01-20 23:03:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1528988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Barkour/pseuds/Barkour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tiana didn't get the invite.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Great Big Party Every Night

**Author's Note:**

> Set well after the movie, in the same loose sort of continuity of a number of TPatF stories I wrote waaaay back in 2009. Don't worry: you don't need to read any of them to read this.

Tiana left the Palace at a quarter till nine. The sun had set an hour and some before, but the evening was still hot, muggy, though the stars showed brightly enough, and she drove the Tudor with the windows rolled down so at least she might feel a breeze across her face. She’d taken off her heels in the car; the shoes pinched her feet like they hadn’t in years, and she wasn’t yet sure if she dared be excited about that, but the hope was there, the thought that maybe—Well, they had two children already. She could be happy with that. 

New Orleans was as it was most nights, lamps shining, somewhere a band playing on a balcony looking over a square, and lovers walking together as friends walked together, too, some holding hands and others linking arms and a few, like shadows, drifting alone. Beneath a tall lamp post two women were pressed together, their heads bent, one laughing and the other kissing her on the cheek; a wonderful night in the late summer.

Their house sat at the end of a short, narrow lane, in a quieter part of town away from the brightest lights and the swinging-est bands. The Tudor grumbled as it rolled across the loose gravel and the usual blanket of magnolia leaves. The lane was lined on both sides by two neat rows of trees, pink blooming magnolias alternating with their white blooming sisters; their branches stretched out over the lane, like a canopy. In one of the trees an owl stirred and called out: “Be quiet! I’m chasing a mouse!” A few peculiarities of the spell lingered, and she had long since given up wondering if she’d ever stop hearing the birds talking to one another in the trees at night.

To the owl Tiana said, “Well, yelling at me isn’t going to help you any,” and the owl hooted, then the branches rustled and he’d taken flight. He wasn’t one of the regulars; she knew most of their voices by now. 

She knew, too, that the lights weren’t supposed to be on in the downstairs rooms of the house, but there they were, as homey as could be, a light on in every window. Tiana picked up her bag and her coat and her shoes, and she went into the house. The party was in full swing, off in another room. The cat, Marie, stalked past Tiana as she left her shoes by the door. Marie said, “I told them not to do it,” in a sulky voice as she slipped back into the shadows. This was, for Marie, who was very much Angelie’s cat, a particularly kind welcome.

Naveen had brought out the gramophone and the records, and the Count Basie Orchestra, like the piper in one of Mama’s stories, called to Tiana, drawing her on her bare feet to the parlor. At the door she paused: the drapes were tied back from the windows, and the lamplight reflected warmly off the glass, and so the room gleamed like something out of a dream. Naveen was barefoot too, but Angelie had on her patent leather shoes and her good Sunday dress, the one with the satin ribbon at the waist, and they were dancing together, Naveen’s back bent, Angelie up on her toes.

“And now what do y’all think you’re doing?” Tiana asked. 

“Mama!” 

That was Ghaliya, who came tearing over from the corner where she danced on her own in her nightgown and a pair of Tiana’s shoes. Tiana took two wide, quick steps into the parlor and caught her youngest daughter just before Ghaliya—catching her foot on the mouth of the shoe and flipping out of it—busted her nose on the floor. The nearness of disaster had Tiana’s heart racing, but Ghaliya just laughed and hugged her around the waist. 

“I,” said Naveen, “am trying to save my feet from this toe-crushing monster.”

“I didn’t step on your feet,” Angelie protested. “That’s not fair—I got it right.”

Tiana hoisted Ghaliya up with her as she stood. “Oof—oh, baby,” she said, balancing Ghaliya on her hip, “you’re getting too big for me to do this.”

“I’m a big girl,” Ghaliya said proudly, and she swung her leg out so that the second shoe flew off, way across the room till it landed somewhere on the other side of the settee.

“Stupid!” said Angelie, and Naveen caught a finger in one of her curls and pulled.

“No names,” said Naveen, “remember that? Or it’s bed every night at six for you and no more fun until you’re thirty or père is dead.” 

He made a sad face, his eyes crossing, and Tiana bent to buss Ghaliya on the cheek so he wouldn’t see Tiana’s smile. Maybe he saw it anyway in the way her shoulders curved: Naveen smiled at Tiana. 

“But she _is_ ,” Angelie was arguing.

Ghaliya, who had curled around Tiana’s shoulder, straightened. “I’m not! I’m not stupid—I’m a big girl.”

“A big girl,” Tiana said before matters escalated into real trouble, “who should be in bed by now.” And she crooked her eyebrows as she looked over at Naveen.

His cheeks creased, his smile turning into something cheeky, and he turned his head slightly away so that now he smiled sidelong and up at her. Innocently he said, “We were only having a small party.”

Tiana’s arms strained, holding Ghaliya up as she did. Ghaliya smelled faintly of water, clean bath water, and the rose-scented soap both the girls used. Brushing Ghaliya’s forehead, Tiana thought how she ought to be stern, to tell them all to go to bed right now; the girls were supposed to have been in their room with the lights out absolutely no later than eight-thirty. Most nights they were asleep when Tiana got home.

Naveen had on trousers and a shirt, nothing at all as fancy as Angelie’s nice dress, and the shirt had a new stain on it, likely from dinner. Most nights, yes, the girls were asleep before nine, and most nights they came with their father to eat dinner at the restaurant with Tiana, but they’d a punishment for setting off a small, and accidental, grease fire in the Palace’s kitchen and that meant dinners at home for three nights. Just the one last night to go and then they were done, and she’d have a little table reserved again for Angelie and Ghaliya and Naveen.

A trumpet sang on the record, and Helen Humes sang with it. Tiana swayed with Ghaliya’s head warm and heavy on her shoulder and Ghaliya’s plump arm slung behind her neck.

“And you didn’t invite me,” Tiana said, pursing her lips. “I just don’t know how I’m supposed to take that.”

Naveen scoffed. “Oh, there must be some reason—perhaps your card was lost in the mail?”

“Sounds to me like you just didn’t want me around,” she said teasingly.

With a straight face Naveen said, “No, no, Miss Stick-in-the-Mud, please—how could we have a real party without you? A party with dancing and laughing and singing—”

“And fun—”

“Yes, and that too,” said Naveen, “although I’m not so sure what this ‘fun’ is, is that something you’re familiar with? Could you explain ‘fun’ to me?”

She would have laughed—she nearly did—but that she knew he wanted her to laugh, and she wanted him to work just a bit longer for it. In the car on the way over, as she passed the lovers under the light, Tiana had glanced across the seat but of course Naveen hadn’t been there. He would have smiled back at her in the dark, that same flirt’s smile he offered her now. She’d waited. He just had to wait, too.

Angelie was looking back and forth between them, her eyebrows gradually knitting as she grew more perplexed. She peered up at Tiana.

“Do we have to go to bed, Mama?”

“I don’t wanna go to bed,” Ghaliya said immediately.

“Bed?” Tiana said, acting surprised. “But I’ve only just got here. You can’t stop the party when I haven’t even had a dance with this good-looking gentleman.”

“Good-looking?” Naveen took her hand as she gave it to him, and he drew her across the floor to him, Tiana and Ghaliya still settled against her side. “Please. I am gorgeous—devastatingly handsome—very…” His own beauty left him at a loss.

“Very full of yourself,” Tiana suggested.

“Full, I think,” said Naveen solemnly, “of love for you,” and then he grinned, pleased with himself. 

Tiana laced her fingers together with his and pressed her face to the crook of his shoulder, that sweet, familiar hollow where it dipped on the way to his throat.

“You’re laughing!” He was crowing as he turned her around with him on the spot, the two of them swaying together; the three of them. “You see, a party wasn’t such a bad idea, was it?”

“I like parties,” Ghaliya said, and Naveen drew back enough that he could swoop in again to kiss her on the cheek.

“None for me?” asked Tiana, still laughing.

Naveen glanced up at her through his dark, dark eyelashes. “I have something special for you,” he said, “but that’s for later. For the afterparty.”

Angelie said, “What’s the afterparty?” as she danced circles around them.

“Something your father shouldn’t be talking about,” Tiana said, aiming for sternness or some other thing like that; but the laugh kept ruining it. Naveen’s thumb was running up and then down the side of her hand, again and again, and she thought about how if he’d been there with her in the car, she would have leaned over the seat to kiss his lovely mouth.

“I promise, little frog, I will tell you when you’re thirty,” said Naveen, “or when I die,” and then it was Naveen who leaned over, to kiss Tiana sweetly on her mouth.


End file.
